Genetics

abolition reports that scientists have created a sheep that’s 15% human, as quantified by cell count. The cells are spread out through the sheep’s body, so we’re miles away from a sheep with feet that look human, but we’re a lot closer to organs that human bodies might accept as human. The goal with this research is to turn animals into “organ factories” where a (physically) sick person could have their own stem cells injected into a sheep foetus, and a few months later they’d have organs that were human enough to work in a transplant.

This is about a process called xenotransplantation, and it’s scary on so many levels. Two prime areas of concern are the release of retroviruses and the animal rights issues. Retroviruses (and this is based on a presentation made at a xenotransplantation seminar I attended 7 years ago, so please don’t take this as gospel) are viruses that were basically linked into our DNA from thousands and thousands of years ago. They don’t hurt us at all and we live in perfect harmony, but if we were to assimilate animal tissue with its own set of retroviruses that we don’t have any experience with, new diseases could emerge. HIV is believed to be an example of a retrovirus that came from another species. As for animal rights concerns, this one is pretty strightforward. The techniques in this article have been in the works for 7 years. While all animals in the study were likely killed for autopsies, making their lives a lot shorter, many were born with organs that didn’t really work, which can’t be fun. Once the procedure is stabilized, after who knows how many lives, we’ve got a situation where animals are being bred specifically for their organs, which isn’t much different than the food system we’ve got today, except for the fact that these animals will be, by definition, partly human.

Aside from some scientists’ weird fetishes, this is mostly happening because there are way fewer organs available for transplant than there are people who need them. Please sign your organ donor cards today, and more importantly, discuss your wishes with your families – doctors aren’t going to rip parts out of your corpse if your family doesn’t want them to, and you won’t be around to argue the point.

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Happy Weekly World Porn Day, in which we break format slightly to take the weirder VP submissions and combine them into what could be a running list of apocalypse signs or just another day at the office. You choose. Many people have reported the virgin birth of 5 Komodo dragons after Flora the dragon successfully hatched her eggs despite never having met a member of the opposite sex. While some reptiles have been known to be able to reprodue asexually, nobody knew Komodo dragons could do that, so I guess that Jurassic Park scene where Jeff Goldblum says life finds a way wasn’t just sayin’. So does this mean that Ronald McDonald might have kids some day? In other WWPD news, pirhan reports that a Chinese boy has managed to kill 443 chickens using the power of his voice, leaving slaughterhouses everywhere to debate how activists would react if this procedure were to become industrialized.

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jeremytough sends word that the recent moves to accept meat and milk from cloned animals may lead to some disturbing next steps, including the development of “zombie” animals who don’t feel stress or pain at slaughter. From a purely ethical perspective, there’s a chance that this move could reduce suffering in factory farms in the longer term, but in the short term, genetic modification, just like cloning, can result in massive numbers of mutated cows who live brief tortured lives. From a health perspective (although I wonder why I’m still talking abotu the health issues of red meat in 2007), I’m imagining a sci-fi movie where these docile traits are passed on to consumers, but that would just be scare mongering. More likely would be a case where the incubation period for a health condition that’s passed to consumers from GM/cloned cows takes longer than the approval process to manifest – after all, mad cow disease is believed to take years to manifest in humans. Also, zombies eat brains. Everyone knows that. Link.

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frank language notes that scientists have created a pig that glows green under ultraviolet light. This will somehow boost stem cell research, though the article doesn’t say how. Since the interweb’s supposed to liberate the “citizen journalist,” let’s help the newswires with our own theories as to how injecting the genetic material from a jellyfish into the womb of a pregnant sow could be helpful to anything. Personally, I suspect researchers are using “stem cell” to get some more research money, the same way interweb startups use “community driven AJAX-enabled monetized content” to get VC funding. Post your thoughts in the comments. Link.

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Here’s an interesting pairing to last week’s story about the acceptance of cloned meat: many people have written in over the past few days to note that the UDSA claims they’ve found a way to genetically engineer cattle so that they can’t form prions. A prion is the abnormal protein that can lead to death from mad cow disease, and it’s believed that by consuming a mad cow prion, humans can get sick and die. The research is still at least 3 years from completion, but this could lead to a future food supply that’s free of mad cow disease – as long as every cow in the USA becomes genetically modified, that is. In the meantime, countless cows will be poked, prodded, and intentionally given a disease that fills their brains will holes while this gets tested out, all so that a group of consumers can eat something that’s been linked to heart disease and cancer, both of which have a greater chance of killing you than the mad cow lottery does. Link.

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I need to change my vacation schedule next year, ’cause all the good news comes out between Christmas and New Years when nobody’s watching. It’s already being discussed in the forums, but it should also be noted here that the US Food and Drug Administration has decided that meat and milk from cloned animals are, well, maybe not safe, but as safe as regular meat and milk. No kidding, that’s how they word it – “as safe as the food we eat every day.” Do you think their press secretary is veg? If I worked for the FDA, I think I would be. Well, I am anyway, but you know what I mean. It could still be a few years for cloned meat to show up in grocery stores, and the feds are still trying to figure out labelling rules – my vote is they incorporate the name of the animal in the label, since there will only be 3 or 4 of them outside of zoos or hobby farms if this takes off. Link here, comments here…

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Dave Noisy reports that humans can follow a scent, just like dogs can, only, you know, less, uh, goodly. This might be a genetic throwback to earlier days, but I prefer to think of it as proactive evolution. If pie ever evolves to grow legs, we’ll be able to track it, even in the dark. Link.

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The next time someone makes a quip about our sharp teeth “proving” that we’re meant to eat meat, instead of telling them to tear open a cow using only their mouths, Mikair points out that you can now say “oh yeah, then explain the placement of your AGT enzyme in your liver then, Herb” (say that even if their name isn’t Herb. It’s like, funny and stuff). See, herbivores and omnivores seem to have a different distribution of AGT, and in humans it seems to match the herbovore pattern. According to a London professor, this might be why humans are so prone to getting kidney stones. According to me, this just jives with my theory that I eat the way I do because my liver needs all the help it can get, what with all the liquid loving it receives. Link.

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kunsjoi reports that Australian scientists are on the lookout for ugly sheep. It seems that attractive sheep are all the rage in the woolgathering set, but sheep with genetic imperfections may be able to tell researchers something about what makes a good wool-grower, so they’re asking farmers to hand them over before they’re sent for slaughter. The goal seems to be to make merino wool better able to compete with synthetic fibres, but if you ask me, they’d be better off working on campaigns to stop museling mulesing, a.k.a. the removal, with shears, of a chunk of skin from the rear of the sheep. With practices like that in mind, synthetics feel all kinds of better. Link.

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